Новости за 09.07.2020

“THE UNION forever defending our rights,” rhapsodises Billy Bragg, a British singer and activist, in his song “There is Power in a Union”. And that, indeed, is what unions do: they advance the interests of their members. That means pushing for better pay, benefits and working conditions. Unions representing police officers are no different: their efforts keep police pensions and salaries generous, and provide their members with broad protections against disciplining and oversight, to keep them in work. Читать дальше...

IT MIGHT have been the most polite bank robbery in New York’s history. At half past five in the afternoon on January 10th a man in a Chicago Bulls baseball cap walked into a Chase Bank branch in Brooklyn and handed a note to the teller. “This is a robbery,” the message said, in handwritten red ink. “Big bills only.” He walked out with $1,000. The man accused of the heist is Gerod Woodberry. Less than four hours before the Brooklyn incident, Mr Woodberry had been released from police custody after being charged with similar offences. Читать дальше...

LAST MONTH, as Spain loosened its tight lockdown, Carmen Olmos opened up her smart tapas bar in the Salamanca district of Madrid for the first time since early March. Little by little she brought all nine of her staff out of the government’s furlough scheme. She is allowed to use only 60% of her tables, the office workers who used to drop by for breakfast or lunch are still teleworking and trade is a third below its pre-pandemic level. She had to close two other bars in the previous slump, in 2009-12. Читать дальше...

THEY WILL pour 8,372 commemorative cups of coffee in Srebrenica on July 11th. A quarter of a century after the fall of the Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) enclave at the end of the Bosnian war, when that number of men and boys are reckoned to have been massacred by Bosnian Serb soldiers, this year’s ceremony will feature videos sent by princes, presidents and leaders from all over the world. But one prominent local figure will be conspicuously absent: Srebrenica’s own mayor.

IT HAS LONG been a constitutional perk for a French president to treat the country’s prime minister as a shock-absorber: useful for cushioning damage, replaceable when worn out. Under the Fifth Republic, only one president, Nicolas Sarkozy, has governed with the same prime minister for his entire term. It is more unusual, however, to get rid of a prime minister who is popular—and swap him for another that nobody has heard of. Yet that is what Emmanuel Macron did on July 3rd, when he replaced Edouard Philippe with Jean Castex. Читать дальше...

SOME SAID Graziano Mesina had absconded to the neighbouring French island of Corsica; others that he had fled to Tunisia. But what became increasingly clear on July 3rd was that the man known as the last balènte, or Sardinian bandit, was yet again on the run—at the age of 78. His younger sister, Antonia Mesina, said he had called by her house the previous day, just before the supreme court in Rome turned down her brother’s appeal against a 30-year sentence for a drug-trafficking offence. “I’ve not seen or heard from him since,” she said. Читать дальше...

IT WAS BORN as a church, one of the icons of the Byzantine world, before being converted into a mosque by the Ottoman Turks and into a museum by their secular-minded successors. But now it would be transformed again. Workers squeezed a bland wooden minbar into a corner of the nave and a mihrab into a nearby portico, drew panels and screens to obscure the dazzling 13th-century Christian frescoes looking down from the vaults and the dome, and unfurled a red carpet over the marble floor. A muezzin summoned the faithful to prayers. Читать дальше...

MARK RUTTE makes an unconvincing villain. In person, the Dutch prime minister resembles an over-caffeinated vicar, mixing manic good-cheer with sermons on the importance of living within one’s means. The 53-year-old lives alone in a modest apartment, cycles to his poky office in The Hague and takes time off from running the country to teach social studies at a local school. Such do-goodery has not stopped Mr Rutte being cast as the bad guy in Brussels as the EU argues over a €750bn ($845bn) fund... Читать дальше...

WHEN GHISLAINE MAXWELL arrived in New York in 1991 her life was in pieces. Her father’s corpse was found floating near a yacht that bore her name; her family business had imploded; the Maxwell name was mud. Yet within a few years she was back on top: living in style on the Upper East Side and sitting at the very heart of New York society.

THERE SEEMED nothing much wrong with Stanford, as far as William Dement could see. To someone like him, who had left New York in January 1963 with his car buried in snow, this university—with its palms, its Spanish-colonial buildings and its skies of unbroken blue—looked like paradise. He and his wife strolled about and ate ice creams, in January, in a state of wonder.

MUCH OF the international effort thus far to combat climate change has focused on cutting emissions of greenhouse gases, chief among them carbon dioxide. That is, of course, a rational approach. Global average temperatures are roughly 1.1°C warmer today than in pre-industrial times and CO2 is the main culprit. It and other greenhouse gases are produced when fossil fuels are burned to generate energy or power engines, in steel and cement-making, by farming and deforestation. In the long term, eliminating... Читать дальше...

YOU MAY think that central banking is a sort of macroeconomic engineering—tweaking an interest rate here or a financial regulation there. But psychology enters into it, too. In order to achieve strong growth, people need to spend today as if the health of tomorrow’s economy were assured. That makes communication critical. Early on Jerome Powell, the chairman of America’s Federal Reserve, showed signs of an aptitude for managing collective confidence. He is plain-spoken, with a charm that often eludes economic policymakers. Читать дальше...

THE FIRST Chinese graduate from an American university, Yung Wing, deemed his college years the great adventure of his life. Alas, his graduation from Yale in 1854, sponsored by missionaries who spotted his talents as a boy in rural Guangdong, was a high point. Soon political mistrust and prejudice, both in America and China, filled his life with setbacks. These included the ending of his scheme that involved bringing 30 Chinese youths to America each year. Back in Beijing, imperial mandarins... Читать дальше...

FUTURE ARCHAEOLOGISTS of the internet will unearth a fascinating shift in digital content in early 2020. Before this turning-point, social media were cluttered with videos of cats doing cute things. Now they are dominated by pictures of sourdough loaves doing nothing.

MUCH MYSTERY still surrounds the fire that broke out at an important nuclear facility in Iran on July 2nd. Some of the region’s spooks say the blaze was the result of a cyber-attack. Others insist it was a bomb. Suspicion has fallen on Israel and America, which have a history of sabotaging Iran’s nuclear programme. Other episodes have raised eyebrows in recent months—explosions at power plants and near military sites, a gas leak at a chemical plant. Some of these may also have been the work of saboteurs (see article). Читать дальше...

OVER THE past few years countless predictions have been made that the global technology industry will suffer a painful rupture because of tensions between America and China. Real damage has been surprisingly hard to spot. Last year Apple made over $100m of sales a day in China, while Huawei reported record revenues despite America’s campaign to cripple it. Investors have piled into tech companies’ shares, buoyed by the prospect of new technologies such as 5G and a pandemic that is forcing billions... Читать дальше...

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The UN at 75

Your special report on the UN (June 20th) outlined several “great fractures” that could lead to worldwide bedlam. One scenario missing from the list is the possibility of China annexing Taiwan. This would confirm the UN’s impotence. Just as America vetoes any resolution condemning Israel, China can veto any resolution condemning its actions, even if those actions are condemned by every other UN country.

Your call for a summit of the five permanent members of the Security Council is timely. Читать дальше...

Researchers have discovered a new way to more accurately analyze microscopic samples by essentially making them 'glow in the dark', through the use of chemically luminescent molecules. Current methods of microscopic imaging rely on fluorescence, which means a light needs to be shining on the sample while it is being analyzed. While this method is effective, it also has some drawbacks.

Sri Lanka Cricket is aiming to resume its halted 2019/2020 domestic season by the end of July, with the country's sports ministry having already given the go-ahead, ESPNcricinfo understands.

MaliVai Washington is a "little sad." That's because he holds a 24-year record that he never expected to possess for so long -- he's the last African American to reach a grand slam final.

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NEW YORK — American broadcaster CBS will get an early start on its Champions League deal, showing games next month when the pandemic-delayed competition resumes. The rights to the rest of this Champions League season and all of next season became available last month when Turner opted out of its 2018-21 deal for exclusive English

Mission: Impossible 7 is bringing back multiple familiar faces alongside Tom Cruise, but here is every character who isn't confirmed to return.

George Floyd, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice and Breonna Taylor were some of the many names that were included in the tribute